April is the Cruelst Month for Phillies Fans

Rich Hoffman's article today hit the nail on the head with respect to the Phillies’ disastrous start and the two week window in which the Phils have to turn it around or the season is probably lost. If anything, Hoffman understates the crisis given the Phils’ April history.

 

 

 

It is, quite simply, not possible to overstate the importance of April baseball.

 

It is, without question, the mos important month of baseball, with the possible exception of September.

 

Who you are as a  team in April almost always defines who you are as a team in August and September. Through the wonder of Google, I just found the baseball prospectus site that keeps game logs for every single season. From

1987 through 2005 -- exempting '95, since there was no April baseball that year -- the Phillies have had just five seasons in which they played above .500 baseball in April.

 

Not surprisingly, in those 18 seasons, 19 if you include '95, they've had just five winning seasons of baseball.

 

Two classic examples of recent bad April baseball vintage, and how those Aprils destroyed our seasons.

 

In '02, the Phils went 71-64 for the final 5 months of the season, according to Baseball Prospectus. Not bad, not great, but decent enough that had they just gone 14-13 in the month of April they'd have won 85 games for the year

and been in the hunt for the wild card.

 

Not so. They went 9-18. Won 80 games for the year.

 

In '04, they went 76-65 in the final five months of the season. Their 10-11  start meant that they won just 86 games, rather than 90.

 

Bad starts mean bad seasons. The Phils last year had that amazing homestand where they went 12-1.

 

Do you realize what their record was after winning 12 out of 13 games?

 

36-28.

 

They were so many games below .500 that winning 12 of 13 only put them at 36-28 and they were still in 2nd place behind the Nats at the time.

 

Without further adieu -- hide your eyes or hit the delete button if you don't want to see the horror -- here are the last 18 Aprils in Phillies history:

 

'87: 7-13

'88: 7-12

'89: 11-12

'90: 10-9

'91: 9-12

'92: 10-12

'93: 17-5

'94: 9-14

'95: n/a

'96: 13-11

'97: 8-16

'98: 12-13

'99: 11-11

'00: 7-17

'01: 14-10

'02: 9-18

'03: 16-12

'04: 10-11

 

I don't have the numbers for '05, they weren't up on baseball prosepctus, but I sure know we had a sub-.500 record. I know, because we all went to that Nats-Phils game at RFK in late April and we spent the entire game bitching.